Work from home? Tired of all those chirpy articles about how to maximize your productivity written by thought leaders and lifehackers? Read on.
So you might have noticed I have the Twitter now. (I know, I know—just pretend I live in some remote, picturesque nation where tech innovations, social media, and the hot new TV shows are not allowed.) Since I started tweeting, I’ve been getting dozens of links to articles about how to work from home effectively. Now, maybe you’re a freelance writer or editor who finds the advice in these articles helpful, and if so, that’s great. You can skip this post and get right back to prioritizing your to-do lists in your business-casual pants that probably don’t even have any cat fur on them.
For everyone else I have the following to offer, gleaned from many years of working at home and actually getting paid for it. Forget about keeping regular hours, dressing for success, and any other rules that make you wonder why these people bother working from home in the first place. The key to a successful freelance career is to find a routine that works for you and ignore the lifestyle fascists who want to shame you for it.
Take a shower every day
And then put on something you can wear in public without having to explain to everyone you meet that it’s laundry day. This won’t make you any more productive or organized, but it will increase your self-confidence if you have to open the door to sign for a package.
Breakfast is the most important meal
This is absolutely true, and it doesn’t matter what time you eat it or what it is, as long as it’s not beer. Alcohol for breakfast will seriously inhibit your page count; even Hemingway knew that.
Screen everything
Your phone, your email, your front door—breaks are essential, as I will discuss next, but they need to be on your schedule. Unless you’re expecting an important call/email/visitor, ignore everyone while you’re working.
Take breaks
Take a lot of them. You cannot give fair treatment to any manuscript if you’ve been staring at it for hours. Every ten pages, every chapter—whenever you come to a natural stopping point, stop. Get up out of your crouch and move around. You don’t have to go to the gym (you’re welcome), but you do have to reacquaint all the parts of your body with blood flow.
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Enjoy some bonding time with the animals or plants in your home.
They will appreciate it, and so will you. Bonus points if you can do it outdoors.
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Make a snack.
Nothing good to eat in the house? Take this opportunity to go shopping. You have to do it anyway, and the middle of the day is the best time to go because almost everyone else is at work.
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Spend 20 minutes on household drudgery.
Almost every article about home-office productivity counsels against letting yourself get distracted by housework, but I say they are dead wrong. First—once more, with feeling—you have to do it anyway. Second, mindless, repetitive tasks like folding laundry, putting away dishes, or pulling weeds allow the creative part of your brain to roam free. A good writer never passes up an opportunity to daydream.
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Catch up on electronic ephemera.
Now you can check all the email, tweets, and whatever else you’ve got going on, but watch your time, and don’t let anything derail your goal for the day. Did we talk about goals? Right, we didn’t, because your goal for the day is to get stuff done. If whatever you’re doing on social media or email will take you longer than 20 minutes and does not qualify as an emergency by adult standards, stop doing it. Because your goal for the day is not “Read all of the Internet, solve everyone’s personal drama, and cure ignorance.”
Switch rooms
Sure, I have an office. It’s that place where the printer and the hard-copy style manuals live. As far as the IRS is concerned, that is my place of business, but I don’t do any actual work there. Moving to another room can help you see your work with a fresh perspective, and not just because the sun was in your eyes in the kitchen.
Reward yourself
It’s how everyone from CEOs to SAHMs to those dogs that dig people out of earthquake rubble keep it together. Had a great day? You deserve a treat. Had a crap day? Yep. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, and you can use the 20-minute rule for rewards, too. Lately, I’ve been streaming episodes of Portlandia and 30 Rock (see previous statement about backward nation, three to five years behind on TV) to get me through some long projects. Regardless of your genre, you can learn just about everything you need to know about timing from talented comedy writers.
Whatever you use as a motivator, enjoy it. Give it the same guiltless focus you bring to your work, and when it’s done, get back to the salt mine.
A word about to-do lists
Use them if and however they work for you. Some love paper organizers with a near-pornographic intensity; others are happy with scratch paper. I like to keep lists on my phone and on the Sticky Notes program on my laptop. Something about not just crossing off completed tasks but deleting them like a cranky Cyberman appeals to me.
The lists can get you into trouble in two ways. One is if all your tasks are monumental or depend on someone else getting something done. Try to narrow the list to items that you can complete in one day. Break items down into reasonable, non-terrifying microtasks if necessary. The second is if you aren’t using the list as a focus for the day’s efforts but as a repository for memoranda. Put that stuff somewhere else, with the understanding that, if you have to write it on a list to remember not to forget about it, it’s probably not all that important.
Possibly the best part of working freelance from home is that you don’t have to behave the way you would in an office full of other people. Instead of wasting time trying to recreate the office environment at home, bring that energy and creativity to your work. Wear what you like, eat when you like, keep the volume level where you want it. And delete the bossy purveyors of lifehacks from your Twitter stream to make room for something useful, or at least fun.